


Strikethrough

by IndelibleEvidence



Series: Damaged Goods [1]
Category: Blindspot (TV)
Genre: Angry Sex, Angst, Conflicted Emotions, Episode Tag: 4x07, F/M, wound care
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2019-02-16
Packaged: 2019-09-07 14:20:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16855585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IndelibleEvidence/pseuds/IndelibleEvidence
Summary: While Kurt sorts through the chaos left of their apartment, Remi is hurt fleeing from Eve. With a wound tearing through Weller's name on her back, unable to risk going to the hospital, she's forced to call the husband she hates for help with medical care. Can Kurt find common ground with the woman his wife used to be, or will she run the second she no longer needs his aid?





	1. Chapter 1

Kurt carried the last bag of broken glass and trashed homeware to the garbage chute at the end of the hall, already wishing the task of cleaning up wasn’t over. The apartment had taken about three hours to repair and put back together. Though there was still a noticeable difference between the way it had been last night and the way it looked now, at least he could take a step without treading on broken glass or ripped cushions.

His heart, on the other hand, felt shattered and torn, and now he had nothing to do with his hands while he tried to figure out how the hell to bring Jane back from Remi’s consciousness.

Was it even possible? Had he lost his wife forever? Would he have to back up the rest of his team while they stormed Remi’s new hideout, and arrested or shot down his wife’s body?

It wasn’t fair. Jane had done so much good in the time she’d been herself. To have her revert back to her former, terrorist persona now, while she was dying—that was too cruel.

He paced the clean, tidy apartment as he thought back over the past few months. Remi must have made her grand comeback when Jane had regained consciousness after her fainting spell, while he was still in a coma. If Kurt had been conscious when she’d come around, he would have known something was off with her immediately. But she’d had a week and a half to do her homework, figure out what had happened since Times Square, and ‘perfect’ her Jane persona before he’d woken up.

He stared at the DVD of their wedding day, which he’d retrieved from the floor while he was cleaning up. A couple of weeks ago, the day they’d learned the ZIP was killing Jane, he’d gone home to find her—Remi—watching it, and she’d had fed him some bullshit line about not wanting to forget their wedding. He’d bought it at the time, but in retrospect, he felt gullible as hell. Remi had been analysing Jane’s inflections, the way she’d showed him affection in the footage. Making sure her act was still good enough to fool him.

Kurt should have seen it. He’d chalked the inconsistencies up to grief at Roman’s death and worry about his own wounds, then the devastating news about her worsening medical condition. In particular, the way she’d been verbally lashing out since they’d heard about her prognosis should have set off alarm bells, but he’d been too slow to realise. And if not for Allie’s concerns, Remi would have thrown him off following up the Violet Park angle after the biological attack—she’d learned just how to play his emotions to her advantage.

Not that he could blame it all on Remi. Sure, she was a master manipulator, but he’d been off his game too, first dealing with his own inadequacies about his recovery from the gunshot wound and coma, and all the exhausting rehab that came with it. Then he’d felt anxious and helpless about Jane’s medical condition, and let those issues skew his good sense more often than not.

No more. He was going into this with his eyes wide open. Remi had played her last card last night, trying to stay undercover as Jane—and it had been a strong one. Tears in her eyes, she’d accused him of being unable to trust anyone after what had happened with Taylor and his father. But Jane would never have thrown that at him. She still felt too much guilt over her assumed identity as Taylor, even though she hadn’t known it was a lie at the time.

Sure, Remi’s words had hurt, but knowing what he did now, Kurt wasn’t going to lose sleep over them. She didn’t know him, not the way Jane did. She’d just been trying to find a way to prey on his insecurities, but she’d missed her mark and now he knew the truth.

How could he find Remi? What had she been working on with Violet Park, and before that, Dolan Osmond? Something she’d stolen half a million dollars to achieve, he knew that much.

What did she want? Roman’s data caches—he was reasonably sure of that. It was probably why she’d stuck around and maintained her cover. Even though Sandstorm was gone, she’d needed the FBI’s reach and expertise to help her get to her brother’s puzzles. They could hold clues to saving her life—the only objective Jane and Remi would share at this point.

They’d found five of the data caches now—Patterson had called that morning and told him she and Rich had found one embedded in a data analyst’s security pass last night. He’d told her he and Jane were taking the day off because Jane was having unbearable headaches. If the news of the FBI evidence storage break-in, and his and Remi’s involvement in it, made it to Patterson, he’d loop her in on the real situation, but for now, he needed time and room to manoeuvre.

What else would Remi want? Presumably Dolan had been her last Sandstorm contact, and he was now dead. She was using Violet for something specific, something for which she needed the money she’d stolen from the mysterious ‘Eve’ who’d assailed them last night. He was pretty sure Remi wouldn’t have seen the last of Eve, not now Kurt had detonated whatever they’d been supposed to steal for the Dabbur Zann.

This whole situation was so complicated. If Remi had inhabited a separate body from Jane, he’d have had no issue shooting her down like the terrorist she was. But whatever happened to Remi had an effect on Jane. If Remi died, Jane died with her. If Remi was injured, arrested, kidnapped, tortured…Jane’s body would pay the price. And whatever Remi did while in control of his wife, Jane would have to live with that if— _when_ , he corrected himself forcefully—she got back.

And that was all assuming that the ZIP poisoning didn’t kill her.

Remi had to know her time was almost up. She’d clearly been holding her symptoms back from him. Maybe they even had less time than he’d assumed—

The landline phone rang, making him jump. People very rarely called the apartment’s landline, knowing he and Jane both worked long hours and were frequently active on their days off. Their cell phones were much easier ways to reach them. But last night, Remi had called this number.

He seized the phone and held it to his ear, unable to bring himself to speak.

“I need your help.”

Kurt didn’t know whether to be relieved or infuriated to hear his wife’s voice. “This is a change from last night. I thought you were determined to kill me next time you saw me. Why would that make me inclined to help you?”

“Because you care what happens to my body, even if you don’t care about me. You still think there’s a chance to get Jane back. Well, this body is gonna have a nasty, infected wound to deal with if you don’t bring medical supplies over.”

Kurt was already reaching for his go bag and checking the first aid kit inside for antiseptic, bandages and sutures. “How bad is it, and where?”

“Right across your name on my back. Seems kinda symbolic, don’t you think?” Remi’s voice was tight with pain and stress. “If it was anywhere else, I could deal with it myself.”

Kurt headed for the bedroom and grabbed a hoodie, the phone still held to his ear. “Why not ask your new friend Violet to do it?”

“She and her people are busy right now. And you and _Jane_ took out all my other allies.” As she had last night, she spoke his wife’s name with such disdain that he gritted his teeth.

“This has gotta hurt—asking _me_ for help after everything you said last night.” He found his shoes, his car keys, then picked up the go bag. At the last moment, he took the clothing out of the bag Remi had attempted to leave with last night, too.

“I’m less than ecstatic, but you’re my only option right now. Eve knows I’m injured. She’ll be watching the hospitals.” Remi sighed. “Will you help me, or not?”

“Send me directions. I’m on my way.”

* * *

Remi tried for the fiftieth time to apply a butterfly stitch to her wound, but it was impossible. Contorting herself so that her arms bent that far, she could just about brush the injury with her fingertips, but the awkward position just made the wound gape open again. She needed help. From someone who could actually touch her.

_Stay the fuck away, Roman,_ she mentally cautioned. Since he’d popped back into her consciousness last night, he’d done more to irk her than help her. It was like she was hallucinating him just to annoy herself, which made no sense. When she’d been less than a minute from having her suicide vest blown up last night, Roman had only made sarcastic observations.

In contrast, Weller had immediately demanded that she stop and put her arms up, so he could inspect the wiring and come up with a plan to help them get out of the vests intact. It had been like her own mind had gone on vacation, offering nothing but the simplest solutions. Weller had been in the driving seat last night, saving her life, handing over a weapon without hesitation, trusting her to keep him covered and watch his back.

Even knowing she wasn’t Jane, he’d put his faith in her without pause, and had seemed honestly shocked when she’d snagged his badge and made a run for it with the device the Dabbur Zann wanted. Like he’d thought she’d have some basic decency not to betray him, even though he knew she’d been trying to cut and run earlier that night, before Eve had shown up.

Roman had thought that was hilarious—until she’d heard the explosion and stopped in her tracks, her heart seizing for a terrified moment. Then he’d started to berate her. “Why does it even matter if Weller is dead? If he is, that means you can stay undercover for longer, keep the team at work looking for my drives, while you play the poor, mourning widow.”

She’d ignored him as she’d made the journey to the new safehouse, but he’d kept going. “Don’t tell me you actually have feelings for the guy. You remember that screwed everything up when Jane fell for him, right? Even Weller could tell that. Jesus Christ, Remi.”

“If you have no constructive advice for me, then shut the hell up,” she’d muttered to him, and he’d vanished again, to her relief.

The sickened sensation in the pit of her stomach had persisted all the way until she’d managed to grab a fresh burner phone and call the apartment. Hearing his voice on the other end of the line, taut with quiet anger, she’d wanted to curl into herself with relief.

Her plans had changed. She’d kill him if he got in her way, but otherwise, she didn’t want his death on her conscience. He’d found out the truth and still put his faith in her to back him up in a tight spot, even though his contempt for her was plain. She owed him one for that.

In truth, what she’d done last night didn’t sit well with her. Sure, she’d manipulated the hell out of people before, run long cons to achieve her aims. But during armed conflicts, Remi always played it straight. She didn’t just up and abandon teammates in the middle of a situation, especially not teammates who were more resourceful and quick-thinking than she herself had been. At least, she hadn’t ever done that before last night.

He’d saved her life, so in turn, she’d saved his, locking him in the building instead of just shooting him in the head. But how long could this go on?

Giving up on trying to patch herself up, she regarded the shredded remains of her shirt and sports bra in disgust. She’d been heading out for supplies this morning when Eve and her surviving goons had caught up with her, and she’d veered into a scrapyard to avoid them. Rolling to avoid gunfire, she’d failed to see the sharp edges in the debris she’d been traversing, and torn her back and upper arm up pretty badly. She’d managed to clean and dress the upper arm wound herself, but her back was a different story.

She pulled on her shirt again, wincing as she felt the edges of her wound part. She might be oozing blood, but at least she was a little warmer, and she wouldn’t have to greet her husband half-naked—even if she had to end up that way for him to play doctor.

_Fuck this whole situation._

The cabin was about an hour upstate, one she and Roman had used as a safehouse before. It was owned by one of the shell companies within shell companies linked to Shepherd’s business interests. Well, it _used_ to be owned by Shepherd. If it had been sold on since Sandstorm’s fall, there was no sign of it.

Remi had jimmied the lock without difficulty and found the place pretty much unchanged. There were dust sheets over the furniture, which she’d yanked off the couch, bed and coffee table in anticipation of staying the night. The gasoline-powered generator had still been ready to fire up in the shed behind the main cabin.

She just hoped Weller wouldn’t try to drag her back to the NYO when he’d finished with her wound. She doubted it—he’d want to avoid criminal convictions for his precious _Jane._ Though he apparently saw nothing of Jane in Remi when he looked at her.

She and Jane couldn’t be that goddamn different. In fact, Jane was worse than Remi would ever be. Family loyalty meant nothing to her. She’d even killed their fiancé, and let herself be so easily brainwashed by Weller that—

_I was supposed to fall in love with Jane. That was your plan. Things fell apart ‘cause Jane fell in love with me. You hate me because I remind you of what a failure you are._

Remi dug her fingernails into her palms, wishing she could erase every memory of the night before from her brain. All of it. Especially Weller’s complete rejection of the idea that it could have been parts of Remi he’d fallen in love with, not Jane. Why did that piss her off so much?

A distant car engine made her seize her weapon and cross to the wall next to the window. The question wasn’t ‘friend or foe?’—she had no friends capable of joining her here—but ‘foe or temporarily friendly foe?’

Weller’s familiar vehicle drove into view, and Remi relaxed a little. As much as she hated to admit it, a standoff with Eve right now might not end well for her.

She slipped out through the back door and crept around the front, pressing the barrel of her handgun against the nape of Weller’s neck as he waited for a response to his knock. Not that he was unarmed—his weapon was already in his hand.

“Toss it away,” she instructed coldly.

“Why would I do that?” Weller asked, not trying to turn or move in any way. “You were the one who called me here. You need me. You’re not gonna kill me, and I’m not gonna kill you.”

“Then why are you holding your gun?”

“Because I knew you’d have yours.” He sighed, sounding weary. “Remi, let’s cut the bullshit here. I’m here to help you.”

“No. You’re here to help Jane.” She nudged at his head with her gun before backing off. “But fine. Go into the cabin, put your piece on the table just inside the door, and I’ll do the same.”

He turned slowly and watched her lower her weapon, then pushed open the door, his eyes still on her. Once both of them had put down their guns and stepped out of arm’s reach of the table, they both relaxed a fraction.

“Let me see the wound,” Kurt said, and Remi tried not to physically recoil at the concern in his eyes, even if his body language was reserved. That anxiety wasn’t for her. It was all for _Jane._ She hated how much that bothered her.

She turned her back to him abruptly and yanked off her ruined shirt, ignoring the pain that blazed through her upper back as she did so. When Weller’s light, careful touch skimmed over her skin, goosebumps that had nothing to do with the cold pebbled over her flesh.

“It’s not too bad. Just the placement that makes it hard to deal with.” His voice was still guarded, distant, but his touch was gentle, yet capable. “Sit down. I’ll grab the first aid kit.”


	2. Blood and Bitterness

Keeping her back to him, in the vain hope of retaining some modesty around a man who’d already seen every inch of her body a million times, Remi sat down in silence. Weller crossed to the kitchen sink and washed his hands, then returned. The couch dipped behind her as he took a seat, and she closed her eyes, steeling herself for the ordeal to come.

She hissed with the pain as he used surgical skin wipes to clean the wound. Was he hurting her worse on purpose because of what she’d done to him? She bit back the urge to curse at him and held as still as she could.

“Does it need suturing?” she asked, when he began to rummage through the kit.

“Three or four should do it, and some butterfly strips.” His voice was distracted.

Remi bit back the urge to thank him. They were enemies now. Thanks were pointless.

“Just getting the Lidocaine ready.”

“I’m surprised you’re bothering,” she said, unable to keep the bitterness out of her voice. “I didn’t think terrorists warranted anaesthetic.”

“Yeah, well, I’m no sadist,” Weller responded shortly. A moment later, Remi felt the sting of the injection into her flesh.

As he returned his attention to the first aid materials, she tried to fill the silence. “You were out of line last night.”

Weller made a sound that was suspiciously like a snort. “ _I_ was out of line? I wasn’t the one whose actions put us in danger of being blown to little pieces, Remi. That was all on you.”

She scowled, knowing he was right about that part. “I can’t believe you’re taking good qualities from me and applying them to your wonderful, saintly _Jane_ , but you‘re making out like there’s nothing of Jane in me, except checking you didn’t die in the explosion. I know they say love is blind, but…”

“That’s really been bugging you, huh? Why exactly _do_ you want me to see the good in you?”

She’d asked herself the same question, several times. As had her hallucination of Roman. “Because I’m not some wicked witch, screwing with your life because I’m just so evil. You can’t just see the world in black and white, Kurt.”

Her wound was good and numb by now, but she still felt the tugs on the surrounding skin as he sutured the edges of her wound together.

“No. You’re not a witch. You’re a puppet, Remi. You dance to your mother’s tune. In fact, I’m gonna bet you have a plan to find her and break her out of CIA custody, don’t you? Because you don’t act on your own. No, you’re a good little soldier—always have been.”

His words were casual, almost dismissive, and too close to the bone for her to bear. A chill swept through her. _Gotta warn Violet he’s guessed part of the plan._ “Fuck you.”

Weller’s tone was almost amused. “That’s about the calibre of response I was expecting.” He leaned in and spoke closer to her shoulder, his warm breath ghosting over it. “Hold still.”

Wishing she had six layers of clothing to hide the ripple of pleasure that ran over her skin, Remi snapped, “You think you know me from a few scraped-together flashbacks that _Jane_ put together? No. You don’t know anything about me.”

“Yeah? I know more than you think.” Weller took a few moments to finish whatever he was doing before he continued, “Even if your motivations and opinions aren’t so clear these days, I can still read your facial expressions. Your body language. I didn’t put together that you were Remi before, because it’s not exactly a common situation. I assumed Jane was grieving for Roman, and then dealing with the terminal diagnosis. But now—now that I’m looking specifically for _you_ —you’ll never fool me again, Remi.”

The determination in his voice was unnerving, and the familiar way he spoke her name set her on edge, even as his proximity and the brush of his hand against her shoulder made her shiver. “Good thing I won’t need to.”

His voice still held a sardonic note, untempered by his amusement. “You’re trying to fool me right now. You think I can’t tell what effect my touch has on you?”

Of course he’d know. He was one of the most observant men she’d ever met, which was why she’d known her cover as Jane wouldn’t last too long. She crossed her arms more tightly across her chest, scowling at the wall.

Weller began to dress the wound, his hands still careful. He seemed to have backed away from the subject of her body’s responses to him, which she had to admit was decent of him. Part of her wished he’d push the point, though. If he acted inappropriately, she’d have a reason to kick his ass.

“So tell me this, Remi. Why do you think the FBI are no better than terrorists? You’ve been working with us for months. You’ve seen the work we do. You’ve stopped terrorists right along with us, saved the lives of innocent people. Why make us out to be the bad guys?”

Remi rolled her eyes. “You think that because your team is one of the good ones, that makes everything okay? The first day Weitz started on the job, he made us stop investigating the links between the terrorist bank and the legitimate bank it was connected to.”

“Terrorist bank? You mean the one you stole half a million dollars from without checking for surveillance first? Amateur move, by the way.” Weller smoothed adhesive tape over the dressing, then dropped a clean shirt in her lap. “There. You’re done.”

Remi pulled on the shirt with relief, then got up and put as much distance between them as she could. “I had limited time and no alternative sources of cash,” she defended herself. “And you’re changing the subject. Weitz is dirty, or at the very least, morally questionable. And your team didn’t even raise an eyebrow.”

“If Weitz _is_ dirty and not just self-interested, we’ll get him. We’ve dealt with dirty directors before. You have to play a long game with them.”

For a moment, Remi thought he was talking about Mayfair, before she remembered Hirst.

“And you are the _last_ person who should be talking about questionable morals,” Weller added.

His gaze was knowing, and she tried not to squirm, knowing her conscience was hardly clean. “You’ve done what you came here to do. Now get out.”

Kurt stood up, and for a moment she thought he was actually going to go, but he only crossed back to the kitchen sink to wash her dried blood from his hands. “Nice try,” he told her, wiping his wet hands on the front of his jeans, “but you’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

“I can knock you out and leave you in my dust before you even see it coming,” she warned him.

“I know. But you won’t. Because I’m all the backup you have against Eve, and you know I’ll keep you safe.”

Remi cast a longing glance at the pistol she’d set down on the table by the door. Hopefully, it would distract him from the second weapon she’d stashed under the couch. “I don’t need anything else from you, Weller.”

He sat back down as though she’d just offered to make him a coffee, the antagonistic glint in his eye sending a combination of irritation and arousal through her bloodstream. “You never could admit it when you needed help.”

Remi sighed. “I’m still not Jane.”

“You don’t remember anything of her life? At all?” The pain that flashed across his face made her feel almost guilty.

“No. They injected me with the ZIP. I went under. I woke up in the hospital three months ago and everything I had was destroyed.”

Did she see sympathy in his expression for a second? It didn’t matter. His eyes hardened again soon enough. “Think how Jane felt. She woke up in a bag with tattoos all over her, and nothing but my name on her back to tie her to anyone.”

“You should be flattered. We sent her to you because we knew you’d take care of her until she could take care of herself.”

For the first time, Weller’s face showed true anger. “You sent her to me because you wanted her to be close enough to frame Bethany Mayfair. Don’t you _dare_ make out that this was some favour you were doing me.”

Remi’s temper flared in response. “Mayfair was dirty. She put away countless people with insufficient legal evidence to do so, using an overreaching secret NSA surveillance program.”

“Mayfair was acting under duress. If she hadn’t used Daylight, she would have been silenced. After it was shut down, she spent the rest of her career trying to make up for it.”

“If she felt so bad, she should have blown the whistle. She was protecting herself. No matter how she felt, she was complicit.”

“She was protecting Sofia Varma, her partner. If she’d gone down, Varma would have gone down too. And she had orders from the White House.”

“Oh, that makes it all just fine, then,” Remi said, rolling her eyes.

Weller got up and went to the front window, turning his back on her to check there was no sign of Eve and her associates. As she had at the evidence storage facility, Remi marvelled at the way he’d dropped his guard around her. If she’d been planning to shoot him in the head, she could have done it ten times already.

“We should come up with a way to lure Eve here. Take her out before she gets the drop on you again.”

Remi bristled. “That implies she will.”

Weller turned and advanced on her, his face cold, but his eyes pained. “You’re sick, Remi. I’m guessing your symptoms are worse than you’ve told me, which means we don’t have much time to find the rest of Roman’s drives. Patterson and Rich found one last night, and it had a ton of medical data on it. They’re sifting through it now, and if they find something, they’ll contact me. But we need to act as fast as we can. We don’t have time to hide from Eve.”

Staring at him, Remi tried to make sense of everything. Weller was taking charge again, trying to problem-solve and step forward, the same way Shepherd or one of her unit commanders would have. It was tempting to fall in with him, accept the chain of command he was establishing. Sure, she could lead a team, and had done so on many occasions, but she was no general.

But Weller’s support was conditional on her becoming Jane again. That complicated things. Did she trust him? Yes. From his perspective, she was almost holding his wife hostage. He couldn’t betray her, or there was the possibility of Jane paying the price for it.

But she didn’t want him around. Things were too complicated now he knew the truth. She didn’t trust _herself_ while she was with him. She just wanted to ditch him and run again—evade Eve, rendezvous with Violet, and break out Shepherd tomorrow night, as planned—but if she gave him the slip, he’d probably tell Patterson what was going on. If that happened, Weller would be her only link to the information on Roman’s drives. She had to stay in contact with him.

She cursed under her breath, then marched into the kitchen to grab a glass of water. After draining it, she massaged her temples and the back of her neck, trying to fend off her rapidly growing headache.

Weller’s voice behind her was closer than she’d expected, making her jump. “You don’t want me here? The feeling’s mutual. I don’t want clean up your mess, Remi. I don’t want to work with someone who has one eye on the nearest exit at all times. Someone who had no qualms exploiting my personal loss as part of a terrorist mission. But if there’s even a chance I can save your life—Jane’s life—and bring her back to me, I’m just gonna have to deal with you. Because I won’t abandon her.”

_I don’t like being in the same room as her._

Remi flinched, wondering if she was starting to hallucinate Weller’s thoughts in her head now. But no—the wave of pain accompanying the words felt like…like _Jane’s._

“You look like you could use some rest,” Weller said shortly. “Go lie down on the couch. I’ll keep watch for Eve.”

Remi shouldered past him, taking the advice only because she was suddenly too exhausted to do anything else.


	3. Preparing the Ambush

It spoke volumes that Remi had actually gone to lie down when he’d suggested it. She’d gone so pale in the kitchen that he’d been seriously worried for a second, but he knew she wouldn’t react to sympathy well if he offered it. She was too suspicious of his motives, looking for the catch.

At least she’d allowed him to treat her wound. Seeing the haphazard strikethrough of his surname had been more than a little gut-wrenching. Remi was right—it did seem symbolic of the deterioration of their relationship since she’d reverted to her old self.

He moved from the front windows of the cabin’s main room to the back, checking no one was creeping up out of the woods on foot.

Remi appeared to have all but passed out, and after quickly checking the pulse in her wrist, finding it regular, he decided to leave her be. She probably hadn’t had much sleep, and the progression of her ZIP poisoning worried him. One trait Remi shared with Jane, though, was stubbornness. If he read her right, she’d try to give him the slip as soon as she felt well enough.

He wasn’t going to allow that to happen.

It was strange, but he felt almost as though he’d already travelled this mental ground. When he’d first found out that Jane wasn’t Taylor—that she’d been sent by Sandstorm to infiltrate his team—he’d been filled with rage and pain at what he’d seen as her betrayal. He’d directed at Jane everything he’d wanted to throw at Remi, but Remi hadn’t been the one on the receiving end. Now that Remi _was_ here, that old anger and hurt had resurfaced. The things she’d done to him…

Of course, it wasn’t all bad. Remi had dug deep into his oldest wounds, plotting to claw them open without caring how it would affect him, but she’d also erased her own memory and had his name tattooed on her back. That had led to him finding the love of his life. _Jane, I will get you back. I swear._

It was hard to imagine that erasing the memories of someone as toxic as Remi could have resulted in Jane, but he guessed that was the whole ‘nature versus nurture’ argument at work. The core of Remi was Jane as she’d been in the early days, still figuring out her place in the world. Kurt refused to believe that she could be gone now, but if he wanted to believe his wife was still in there, he had to accept that there was also good in Remi, deep down.

He watched the sleeping woman on the couch for a moment. In this moment, unguarded, she looked exactly like Jane when she slept. When she was awake, though, it was a different story. Now that she’d dropped the act, Remi blazed distrust and hatred. Even when he and Jane had been at their most emotionally distant, she’d never looked at him with the sneering contempt that Remi had shown him.

This had to go deeper than just the circumstances around Remi’s awakening to find her life in ruins. Remi must have hated him long before that, and he was guessing Shepherd—and her unnerving, almost sexual, yet maternal pride in him—was at the root of it somewhere. How frequently had Shepherd mentioned him to Roman and Remi over the years?

Still, Remi had lived with Kurt for months, as she’d pointed out. She’d slept in his bed, eaten meals with him, listened to his thoughts, laughed and joked with him, pretended to love him. If her hatred really ran so deep, surely he would have seen it beneath her act? No one was that good an actor, not so consistently, for so long. It had only been since she’d learned she was terminal that she’d really begun to slip.

Maybe everyday life with him had started to get under her skin, the way Jane had gotten under his.

 _Careful._ It had been a while since he’d heard Mayfair’s voice at the back of his mind, warning him not to commit to a particular theory too soon. It wasn’t anything as supernatural as a haunting—even when she’d still been alive, he’d sometimes had mental ‘visitations’ from her. Apparently, the cautious part of his mind was narrated by his mentor.

Thinking of Mayfair made him tense up even more. If not for Remi’s schemes, Mayfair would still be alive and heading up the NYO. Not that Remi cared one bit about the world’s loss. She’d told him not to see the world in black and white, but she completely failed to grasp the shades of grey around Mayfair’s situation.

Kurt forced himself to stop thinking about Mayfair. Anger wouldn’t bring her back, and more importantly, it wouldn’t help him to get _Jane_ back. Like it or not, he was stuck with Remi for now.

He just hoped one of them didn’t have to kill the other before he found a way to Jane.

* * *

“Hey.”

Remi smiled at Kurt’s voice out of habit, used to waking up beside him and putting her Jane face on. She opened her eyes, raised her hand to touch his face, but then the pain in her arm and upper back reminded her that she wasn’t waking up with him in their marital bed—she’d passed out on the couch and now he was crouched beside her.

She dropped her hand—and her smile—abruptly and struggled into a sitting position. She felt much better. Time to ditch Weller and get on the road as soon as she could.

“How’re you feeling?” Weller asked, his genuine concern sending a pang of hurt through her. _It’s not for me. It’s for Jane._

“Better,” she said abruptly.

“Good.” Weller held out her handgun by the barrel, offering the weapon so she could take it by the grip. Confused, Remi snatched it from his hand and checked the magazine, wondering if he’d taken the bullets while she slept. Everything seemed to be intact.

“While you slept, I got in touch with Patterson. She tracked down Eve and sent her an anonymous message with our coordinates. We probably have about twenty minutes left to plan our defence.”

Remi resisted the urge to hit him in the face—barely. “Are you insane? Why would you do this?”

“Because you can’t keep running from your problems forever. Eve was gonna find you again at some point. At least here we can plan an ambush.”

For a long moment, Remi stared at him. Then she cursed under her breath and got to her feet. “You’re a pain in the ass, Weller.”

“The feeling’s mutual.” He leaned back against the wall and watched her roll back the dusty rug on the floor of the cabin.

Remi yanked up the trapdoor in the floor and let out a sigh of relief when she saw the plastic tub of C4 she’d stashed there last time she’d visited. “I’m assuming you know how to set up perimeter tripwires?”

He shot her a quick, savage smile that set her pulse racing. “Good call. I’ll take the north and the east side, you do the south and west.”

He plucked supplies from the box and disappeared out the front door before she could reply, leaving her shaking her head at his complete gullibility. She could be out of here in less than a minute, and he’d have to face them all down alone. He probably wouldn’t survive.

On the other hand, he was right—this was her best chance to get Eve off her back for good. If she up and left, letting Weller get killed, she’d probably have to face down Eve later. Without backup.

Whispering a string of insults aimed towards her goddamn fool husband, she grabbed her own supplies and headed for the door. Reaching the front porch of the cabin, she halted in surprise at the array of greasy engine parts on the ground, beside the stairs.

Not too far away, Weller was crouched at the side of the dirt track that led back down to the highway, setting up an anchor point for a tripwire. He arched an eyebrow at her surprise. “What, you think I’m completely stupid?” he called across to her. “You want to waste your time before they get here getting your car to work? Be my guest. Or you could actually stand your ground for once.”

“Remind me why I didn’t suffocate you in your sleep?” Remi didn’t wait for his response, stalking off in the opposite direction. His short, sardonic laugh infuriated her even more.

He knew nothing about her life. She’d stood her ground in dozens of conflicts over the years, with the military, with Shepherd—hell, even during her time in the orphanage she’d fought her share of battles. His painting her as someone who cut and ran at the first sign of trouble was completely unfair.

Except that he’d walked in on her trying to do that at the apartment last night. And she’d ditched him the moment she’d been able to get away when they’d been at the evidence facility.

Okay, maybe he had a point. But it didn’t change the fact that she hadn’t planned to run away today. Even though she’d considered it.

_Damn you, Weller!_

She worked quickly, setting up a perimeter about ten meters out from the cabin and connecting her series of tripwires to Kurt’s. After they’d strategically placed the C4, they retreated to the single-storey cabin to assess their next steps.

“What exactly do you plan to do if I get another migraine in the middle of this?” Remi asked, yanking out a couple of AK-47s and a few boxes of ammo from under the bed.

“Cover you,” Weller said simply, reaching for one of the assault rifles and checking it over.

“It’s really that simple for you, isn’t it?” She scowled at him to cover her inner appreciation of how comfortable he was with the weapon. Something about seeing him sitting on the bed, his hands running over the rifle…it stoked the fire within her, provoking her imagination.

“If I want my wife back, it has to be.” He checked the laser sight critically, then looked over at her. “I don’t like you, Remi. And I abhor what you did to me. But you have a point. There is more of Jane in you than I gave you credit for last night, and—”

The explosion shattered whatever moment of understanding they might have reached, and just like that, they snapped into working as a seamless team, the way they had last night when the fake babysitter had let in her backup. Their personal conflict set aside, they moved into fluid action, weapons at the ready as they moved to separate points of cover.

“You good? Your migraine—” Weller asked, glancing from the shadow moving past the window to her.

“Worry about yourself,” she hissed back, and opened fire.


	4. Heat and Fury

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep, I know. Kurt would never actually have sex with Remi. But it would be really hot, so I kinda don't care. ;)

When he got Patterson’s silent text that the camera at the foot of the dirt road showed two SUVs full of people had headed their way—Eve at the wheel of one of them—Kurt signalled the information to Remi. She responded with hand signals indicating that they should divide and conquer, rather than wait to be overwhelmed, and he nodded, fitting the mobile comms earpiece in his ear and waiting for Remi to do the same.

“You got me?” he asked softly, testing the equipment.

Remi didn’t bother with a direct reply, her voice dry in his ear. “Try not to trigger your own tripwires,” she told him, and ducked out of the back door.

He saw her move past the shattered window she’d been firing through, and sent up a silent prayer to any deity that would listen to keep his wife safe out there. Then he kicked open the front door, taking up a position just inside it as a storm of gunfire let him know he wasn’t alone.

“Weller!” Eve’s voice was biting. “We don’t care about you. We just want your wife. Seems she’s not quite herself recently, so you must be on the verge of filing for divorce. Why not just shove her out here and let us get going?”

“I heard that,” Remi’s voice said in his ear, sounding almost amused. “That’s quite an offer. Maybe you should take it.”

“You kidding me? You’d come back in six months as the right hand of the head of the Dabbur Zann. I don’t need that kind of headache.” Kurt raised his voice so Eve could hear. “She’s my problem to deal with. And the FBI doesn’t negotiate with terrorists.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Eve sounded dismissive. “Fan out, people. Capture the woman. Kill the man.”

It was a relief to know they wouldn’t be shooting Remi to kill. Still…

“Why do you want her? She’s responsible for your Dabbur Zann trouble, but they don’t care about that. They want their money, not the person who took it.”

“You _want_ them to be aiming for my head?” Remi said incredulously, through his earpiece.

“No,” he murmured back, moving to cover beside the window to get eyes on Eve. She looked more stressed than she had the day before. Maybe the fake babysitter he’d blown up last night had been a friend. “But I _do_ want to know if the Dabbur Zann are gonna keep sending people after you once we take care of Eve.”

Remi sighed and was silent.

Eve yelled back, “I heard you call her ‘Remi’ at your apartment, and I did some digging. The way I figure it, the last active member of the FBI’s most wanted terrorist group might be worth presenting to the Dabbur Zann.”

Kurt cursed under his breath. Eve knew too much.

As three quick bursts of gunfire sounded behind the cabin, Kurt slipped out the back door, resisted the urge to check on his wife, and skirted around to the front in a wide arc, trying to get a good angle on Eve without it being immediately obvious to her mercenaries where his shots were coming from. One of them stuck by Eve, while two more stormed the cabin from the front.

“I’ve got Eve and three mercs here,” he told Remi softly, hoping the comms would pick up his voice. “Patterson estimated ten overall. You see the other six?”

“Two died in the explosion. I got one just now. Two more heading my way. I don’t see the last one, if there is one.”

“Keep your guard up. I’ll handle these four, then join you.”

Remi snorted. “However will I manage until you rescue me?”

Kurt rolled his eyes and looked up from his weapon—to find Eve disappearing into the cabin. With a soft curse, he targeted one of the guys he still had a line on, and took him down with a quick burst of fire.

Things moved in a blur after that—moving from one point of cover to the next, avoiding his own tripwires, ensuring he was safe to take a shot before he did. On the other side of the cabin, and through his comms, he heard Remi taking down her targets and tersely relaying the numbers to him. “Three down.”

“Two.”

“Slacker.” The amusement in her voice made her sound almost like Jane—except Jane never would have teased him about how she’d killed more people than he had.

He was about to reply when she caught her breath. “I have eyes on Eve.”

Kurt aimed and took down the last mercenary in his field of view. “Where are you?”

“She’s at the back door.” She hesitated. “Careful. There’s still one merc we haven’t spotted.”

“It’s almost like you care if I die,” he told her, heading back towards the front door of the cabin. “You getting a soft spot for me?”

“Fuck you.” There was a harder edge to her voice now, as though he’d hit a nerve.

“You keep saying that, I might start to think it’s a suggestion,” he taunted back.

Her response was gunshots, followed by a curse as Eve returned fire. Kurt picked up the pace, moving through the cabin to the back door, keeping low.

“Damn you, bitch! You cost me everything.” Eve’s voice was ragged with pain. Remi must have hit her.

“Yeah, well, we’re not so different. I don’t have much left either. The only difference is that now you’re dead.” A final gunshot sounded just as Kurt stepped out of the back door, and Eve toppled into the grass, motionless.

Remi raised her gaze from Eve’s body to him, lowering the weapon. She was obviously riding the adrenaline wave of the gunfight, but where Jane would have felt regret that she’d had to kill someone, there was satisfaction in Remi’s eyes.

“Guess I didn’t need backup after all.” She scanned the woods around them, looking for the final merc, before lowering her weapon a little. “The last guy must have made a run for it. Mercs aren’t exactly known for their loyalty.”

He couldn’t help but take a little dig at her, unnerved by her lack of feeling at the lives she’d taken. “I guess you’d know.”

Anger drew down her brows, hardened her jaw. “I could have shot you in the head last night instead of leaving you in that hallway. You should be grateful you’re not dead.”

“Yeah? Well, maybe you should think about why you can’t bring yourself to kill me. God knows you’ve had plenty of opportunities.”

“It’s not because of your precious Jane, if that’s what you’re implying.” She stalked back towards the cabin.

He followed her, and had just reached the back door when a smattering of gunfire splintered the doorframe. He ducked instinctively, and Remi yanked him inside before returning fire, searing rage transforming her features.

As he regained his footing, she engaged the safety on her weapon before slamming it down on the table and rounding on him. “You’re lucky he was a lousy shot. What the hell were you thinking?”

Her criticism was justified. He’d let his guard down too soon, distracted by thoughts of Jane and Remi. If it had cost him his life, he would have deserved it. He covered his self-recrimination with another verbal jab at Remi, setting aside his own gun. “You really do care about me.”

“Oh, fuck you.” The words were out of her mouth before she could censor herself.

Kurt raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. It was too easy to get under her skin this way—and part of him was enjoying it.

“I’m so done with you,” she muttered, and turned her back on him.

“Running away again?” He had no idea what to do now Eve and her gang were no longer a threat. He was out of moves to get Remi to stay by his side until Patterson and Rich came through with something from the drive they’d found last night.

She spun back to face him, her anger incandescent. “I’m not a coward, if that’s what you’re implying.”

Kurt shrugged. “You said it, not me.”

She threw a punch, which he only just managed to deflect, but before he could regain his equilibrium, she shoved him back against the wall, hard, shocking the breath out of him.

Or maybe it was her aggressive, heated kiss that stole his breath.

He’d known Remi wanted him, but had never dreamed she’d actually do something about it. Before his brain could catch up, he was kissing her back, his fingers tangling in her hair as her nails dug into his scalp. The pain helped jolt him out of his adrenaline-fuelled lust, and he pushed her backwards to get some space, some air.

A million thoughts raced through his mind as he stared at the woman before him, breathing hard. She was his wife, but she wasn’t. Was this cheating? Or could he somehow reach Jane’s memories through intimacy? Would Jane blame him for trying? She was dying, and Remi was going to want to get away from him as soon as he had nothing else she wanted. He had to try something. If he didn’t attempt it, and she disappeared, and later she died…

Remi scowled at him, taking a step back. “God, what was I thinking? You don’t have the guts to sleep with anyone but your precious J—”

Before she could spit out Jane’s name, he kissed her again, decided by the flash of hurt vulnerability he’d glimpsed in her eyes. The things she’d done were unconscionable, but deep down, there were still traces of his beloved wife. Maybe, just maybe, he could reach Jane this way.

Not only that, but he wanted to erase the contempt from her face and voice, destroy the barriers Remi had built to shut him out. He knew exactly how to drive her out of her mind with pleasure, and he knew she would hate how well he knew her body, even as she revelled in his touch. Just for one moment, he wanted her to surrender to him, to take back some of the control she’d ripped from him with her lies and manipulation.

Remi pulled away again, conflict in her expression. “This isn’t what you think. I’m not her.”

Kurt leaned back against the wall, recognising the signs that she needed room to think. She and Jane weren’t so different in certain ways. “What I think is that you need to get off. And so do I.”

Her gaze flicked down to the way his hardening cock was pushing against his zipper, then back to his face. “Then do something about it,” she demanded.

He crossed the space between them, grabbed her by the hips and slammed her up against the opposite wall, remembering just in time to cushion her impact with his arm so that the wound on her back didn’t bear the brunt. Pressing against her, he stared into her angry, lust-filled face, watching her struggle not to rub herself against his cock.

“You’re the one who keeps running away. You want me? It’s your move, Remi.”

Remi answered with another forceful kiss, already tugging at his belt. Kurt seized her wrists and pinned them to the wall, not breaking the kiss as she fought against his grip. Her hips tilted against his even as she tried to escape his hold, a silent sign that she wasn’t actually having second thoughts.

She wrenched her head to the side, freeing her lips to curse at him. “Just fuck me, already!”

Part of him wanted to just drive into her and thrust until they both fell apart. But he needed more. Needed to be in control, just as much as she did. “Why would I do that when it’s so easy to piss you off by making you wait?”

“Ugh!” Her exclamation was half disgust, half moan as he trailed provocative, open-mouthed kisses over the bird tattoo on her neck. “If you think you’re gonna ‘make love’ to me—”

He bit her earlobe hard enough to make her gasp, then growled, “Not the plan. Trust me.”

Remi struggled again, and this time he released her wrists, sensing she was at the end of her patience. Immediately, she yanked up the hem of his shirt, stripping him to the waist within a couple of seconds. Before he could think, she shoved him backwards onto the couch, then climbed astride his lap to give him another breathless, bruising kiss.

Kurt pulled off her shirt in turn, then palmed her breasts, his touch as rough as her kisses. When he squeezed and pulled her nipples, harder than he ever had with Jane, Remi arched and gasped against his lips, grinding more urgently against the hard ridge in his pants.

“You want my mouth on you, don’t you?” he growled against her ear, toying with the button on her pants so she’d know exactly where he meant. “You’ve wanted it for a long time.”

“Shut up.” She kissed him again, all aggression and lust, but she was undoing her pants at the same time, making his pulse skip.

Remi got up from his lap and quickly shed the rest of her clothing, revealing the body he never got tired of lavishing attention on. Swallowing hard, he stood up and pushed her down where he’d been sitting, then knelt between her spread legs with a jolt of anticipation.

She was soaked for him, and he trailed his hand through the wetness between her thighs, unable to resist a smirk of satisfaction as Remi’s scowl deepened. She was trying so hard to stay aloof, to hate him, but he knew her more than she wanted to admit.

“You’ve been waiting for this for months, haven’t you?” He didn’t wait for a reply, leaning in to taste her and enjoying how she spread farther open for him, pressed against his tongue.

“Fuck you, Kurt Weller,” she gritted out, seizing his head and pushing harder against his mouth. “Just get me off. Now.”

It had been around four months since he’d last been down on his wife, and he could feel her tension, her hunger to be satisfied. She wouldn’t last long, he sensed it, and too much teasing would be very unwelcome. He gave in to what Remi wanted, focusing on her clit, using the tip of his tongue the way she loved as he eased his fingers into her.

“Oh, goddamn you,” she gasped, her hips jerking as he found her sweet spot. “Damn you, damn you, damn you…”

He let her grind against the flat of his tongue as she sought her release, her curses and moans making his cock ache.

“God, I hate you so much.” She began to shake, her voice becoming a panting whisper, and if this were Jane, he’d let her take the orgasm and give her as many more as she wanted.

But this was Remi, the woman who’d exploited his deepest wounds for her own gain. Who was even now professing her hatred for him as she fucked his fingers and mouth.

This was a revenge that wouldn’t hurt Jane.

Kurt pulled away, sat back, and watched her fall from the dizzying heights of almost-release into disoriented, furious frustration.

“Fuck!” she groaned, and kicked out at him angrily.

Kurt dodged easily, getting to his feet and ignoring her torrent of curses as he turned his back on her. “You put my family through hell. That’s the least you deserve.”

“Get back here,” she demanded, her voice low and intense. She sounded so much like Jane—emotional and needing him—that he almost turned to check that he hadn’t shocked his wife back to the forefront of her mind.

Ignoring her, he took off his boots and socks, then his belt, dropping it to the wooden floor with a loud clink of the buckle. He heard Remi moving behind him, but didn’t turn around as he stripped naked, suppressing a groan of relief as he freed his cock from the pressure of his pants.

Remi pressed her warm body against his back, reaching around to take him in her hand and stroking firmly up his shaft. Kurt bit back a moan, his eyes falling closed as she teased the slick head of his cock with her thumb.

“I know. You can’t stand to be in the same room as me,” she said, her voice bitter, but her touch never faltering. “But you can hate me all you want—this gives you away. You want me just as much as I want you. Not Jane. _Me_.”

Through the haze of lust and anger, her words tugged at something in his mind. A memory, but he couldn’t place it, and she was just too damn good at stroking him for his mind to cooperate. But there was something…

* * *

Any second now, Weller was going to lose control and fuck her senseless. Remi could feel it in the coiled muscles of his shoulder against her face, in the subtle flex of his abs under her palm and in the pulsing hardness of his cock.

God, she _needed_ it. Especially since he’d left her hanging on the edge of a glorious climax. She was frustrated, infuriated, her pulse thudding between her thighs as though to accentuate exactly what he wouldn’t give her.

She wasn’t going to beg. She _refused_ to beg. She’d die first.

Unwrapping one arm from around his waist, she slid her fingers between her own thighs as she continued to stroke him, making no attempt to hide what she was doing. “If you want, I can just take care of myself—”

That was the final straw, and he turned abruptly to face her, his hands rough against the backs of her thighs as he lifted her off the floor. She hummed triumphantly against his lips, kissing him with a desperation she hadn’t meant to reveal, then disguising it with aggression, scratching her nails across his shoulder blades as he carried her to the couch.

Then she was back in his lap, only there was nothing left between them but heat and fury and need and friction. She scratched red furrows down his back as the tip of his cock breached her entrance. “Yes. _Yes._ ”

He felt so good, so damn good… Once he was all the way inside her, she rested her forehead against his, her eyes squeezed shut, trying to catch her breath at how intense this was.

“Look at me,” Kurt ordered, a growl in his voice.

Her curiosity about the expression on his face was too great for her to refuse. She gazed into his eyes, their bodies interlocked, and hoped he only saw her rage and arousal.

She sure as hell couldn’t handle the pained love behind his anger.

“I hate you,” she whispered, closing her eyes again, and started to move, reminding herself that this wasn’t what he thought it was. She took him as hard and fast as she could, gasping when his strong hands supported her hips and helped each antagonistic movement along.

Her orgasm began to build, enhanced by the haze of pain brought by his bruising grip. The wounds on her back and arm burned as she arched and twisted, but she didn’t care, welcoming the sensations as wholeheartedly as she did the pleasure coursing through her.

“No, you don’t.” Kurt’s voice was tightly amused, and she realised she’d been professing her hatred for him in a breathless chant, even as they rocked together, naked and striving for the same goal. He took her head in both hands, stared into her eyes, and thrust up into her even harder. “This? This isn’t hate, Remi.”

“Speak for yourself,” she hissed, and silenced him with her lips on his, her tongue keeping his busy as their breaths grew short and laboured.

Soon all that mattered was his cock, his fingers against her clit, his slick slide in and out of her until the tension was swept away in uncontrollable pulses of ecstasy. She cried out his name in agonised relief as the pleasure surged and ebbed, forgetting she hated him. Forgetting everything but how perfect they felt together.

Kurt groaned against her neck and drove up into her hard, his release shuddering through him in turn. Remi clung to him, unable to do anything else as the aftershocks of her orgasm faded.

Too vulnerable, yet unable to make herself pull away, Remi settled for twisting the knife. “Congratulations,” she breathed in his ear. “You just cheated on your wife.”

To her dismay, Kurt just laughed, without even lifting his face from her shoulder. “You _are_ my wife. And you’re starting to remember. Even if you still think you hate me.”

“I don’t remember a thing.” She tried to get up, but her muscles were exhausted and slow to obey. “And _you_ should hate _me_.”

“I don’t hate you,” he said, finally raising his head to watch her expression, as though his words should mean something. “I just don’t know who you are anymore.”

 _That makes two of us_. The response came from the back of her mind, from her memory. She sensed they’d had this conversation before. Him, and _Jane._

A sense of irrational betrayal gave her the strength to get up from his lap and reach for her clothes. _No. This isn’t what he thinks._

_Then why do you understand what he’s implying?_

This had gone far enough. Sleeping with him had been self-indulgent. A distraction she couldn’t afford, as magnificent as it had felt. Now she had to get back on track, focus on freeing Shepherd and finding her cure.

It was time to leave Weller behind.


	5. In the Wind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last chapter of this fic, and I decided that the procedure to flip Remi back to Jane doesn't exist in this AU, because even though I love having Jane back, it kind of seemed like a quick and easy fix to neutralise the Remi threat. Oh, and Shepherd never gets broken out of CIA custody, either. :D

Kurt pulled on his clothing quickly, his eyes on Remi. His instinct for when his wife planned to run away from an issue—either physically or mentally—had become sharper since her return from Nepal, and although his body was still telling him to lounge about lazily in post-coital bliss, the situation with Remi didn’t allow for it.

Jane was a snuggler, and god, he wished she was in his arms right now. Remi, on the other hand, didn’t even want to admit she was beginning to get some of Jane’s memories back. She’d push him away with everything she had, frantically rebuilding the walls their intimacy had brought down.

She reminded him of himself, the way he’d been before he’d met Jane. Not that he’d been as prickly as Remi was—but he’d needed to keep a certain distance between himself and his sexual partners, especially back when he’d been in his teens and twenties.

Remi turned back to him, fully dressed, from her jacket to her boots. Ready to walk away at any second. And he had no idea what he could say to stop it.

“You can’t do this alone, Remi. We might not be the best of friends, but we have the same goal right now—getting that poison out of your brain.”

“Unless you get a chance to bring Jane back. Then you’ll kill off the part of me that’s still me without a second thought.”

He didn’t bother to lie to her. “Honestly? Yes. You’re really not showing me the best side of Remi right now, and Remi doesn’t hold a candle to Jane. But that’s irrelevant. I’ll worry about getting my wife back when I know she’s not gonna die a few days or weeks later, which means we need to work together on curing you.”

Remi rolled her eyes. “I don’t need you. I’ll cure myself.”

“If you didn’t need us, you’d have disappeared off our radar the moment you found out you were dying. You considered it, didn’t you?”

Remi swallowed hard, her gaze shifting away from him. “If I had all of Roman’s drives, I could do this alone.”

“No. You couldn’t. Face it, Remi, your brother might not have been the best at strategising on short notice, but the thought he put into his longer games far surpasses anything most people can come up with. Patterson and Rich would have solved his puzzles in a blink if he was on a normal level. You and Shepherd have manipulation and military strategy down to an art, but those drives are challenging even for the smartest people I’ve ever met.” Kurt stood up, and her gaze warily snapped back to him. “You’re running out of time. You need Patterson and Rich working on those drives.”

“So what the hell are you suggesting?” she demanded. “That I go back to pretending to be Jane until we find the rest of the drives?”

“Why not? You’re the one that benefits. My only condition is that you don’t set foot back at the NYO, that you take sick time as Jane until we get this done.”

“And you don’t care what I do while you’re at work?” He might have missed the sly glint in her eye before, but now he’d seen the real Remi, it was easy to spot.

“Oh, I’ll be stuck to you like glue the whole time. There’s nothing I can do to help Patterson and Rich at this point. Anywhere you go, I go.”

Her expression became unreadable—a good indicator that whatever she was scheming up, Kurt wouldn’t like it. But he’d deal with that when it came to it. He’d do anything to stop her from disappearing out of his reach right now.

“Fine. But I want limited contact with your team. Pretending to be Jane is exhausting.”

“Done.” He tried not to let his relief show. It was bad enough that she already knew Jane was his weak spot, without reinforcing it with his behaviour now.

“Then I guess we should repair your car, so we can get going.” She turned towards the door, then swayed, putting her hand to her head with a hiss of pain.

Even though Remi deserved more pain than just a headache, Kurt couldn’t just watch her suffer. He steadied her, guiding her over to the couch. “I’ll handle the car. You rest for a while.”

She leaned back against the couch cushion with a sigh, rubbing her temples. “In retrospect, fucking you was probably not the best decision I’ve made.”

“Ditto,” Kurt said shortly, and headed outside.

* * *

Remi rolled the syringe between her fingers, conflicted. Part of her could see the sense in Kurt’s words, but if she stayed, she’d never get a moment away from him to get to Shepherd. Shepherd had to know something that could lead to a cure.

“Sleeping with the enemy? Now that’s low. Nice fake headache, by the way.”

Remi flinched at Roman’s voice. Her hallucination of her brother was back—she was thankful that at least her subconscious had the decency to keep him away while she’d been riding Weller’s cock. Not that her mind had been functional enough to think of anything but her husband while that had been going on…

“Shut up,” she muttered under her breath, shooting a glare at her hallucination.

“You’re falling for him. You don’t want to leave.”

Remi held the syringe aloft. “Leaving was the plan from the start. I’m working up to it. In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m dying.”

“And you just gave yourself a nice workout. Hope it was worth it. If you don’t find a cure soon, it’s probably the last time you’re ever getting laid… Unless you go home with the hubby, that is.”

Ignoring him, Remi got to her feet and slipped the syringe into her sleeve. It was time to go. And she had no regrets about what she was about to do. None.

Behind her, Roman gave a derisive snicker. He already knew she was lying to herself.

Remi stepped as softly as she could without actively sneaking, knowing that if Kurt turned around, seeing her crouched and stealthy would set off instant alarm bells. As she quietly headed out through the front door of the cabin, she spotted him working under the hood of his car, undoing what he’d done to prevent her from taking off before Eve had arrived.

It probably wouldn’t take him long to finish up. Remi needed to finish this _now_.

Weller tensed just as she raised her arm to jab the syringe into his neck, sensing her presence. She committed to the movement forcefully, plunging the needle deep into his jugular and using her thumb to propel the contents of the syringe into his system.

Weller knocked her back with a fast elbow to the side, but it was too late. He was already faltering, fear in his eyes. “What the hell did you give me?” he demanded, his voice shaky.

As he stumbled, Remi caught him and lowered him to the ground, unwilling to let him fall after the benefit of the doubt he’d given her. “Shhh… It’s just a sedative. I prepared it before I called you, since I knew you’d stop me from getting away if you could.”

Relief flashed through his expression, no doubt because he’d been thinking of the poisoned syringe he’d caught her preparing for him a couple of weeks ago. But that was short-lived, and the fear returned—for her, not for himself. “Don’t run. Please.”

She stroked his forehead as his eyes fluttered shut. “Goodbye, Kurt.”

 _Fuck._ She’d just drugged him, and he still didn’t want her to go. Was there nothing she could do to him that he wouldn’t look past to get his wife back? Why wasn’t she running at triple speed from this…this pathetic excuse for a man?

“Clock’s ticking, sis… Are you done playing nursemaid?” Roman asked, an edge to his voice.

Remi stood up, leaving the syringe embedded in Kurt’s neck. “Did you happen to figure out what he did to the car?”

As she propped open the hood of the vehicle she’d driven out here, Roman looked over the mechanical guts of the SUV. “Put those bits on the porch back in place, and we’re good to go. You should probably take out Weller’s tyres too, while you’re at it.”

Ten minutes later, the hallucination of her brother in the passenger seat, Remi was driving away from the cabin, leaving Kurt Weller unconscious on the ground next to his car.

“No regrets,” she told Roman. “Time to meet up with Violet and go get Shepherd.”

“Finally, we’re getting somewhere,” her brother said.

* * *

“Kurt. Kurt!”

His head feeling like it was full of cotton wool, Kurt groaned at the familiar voice. “Patterson?”

“Oh, thank god.” Patterson helped him to sit up, relief evident on her face. “What happened? You had this syringe in your neck, and Jane’s not in the cabin. Rich is searching the woods for her now.”

Alarm chased away some of the cobwebs in his brain. “Call him back. We set up tripwires armed with C4. Rich doesn’t know where they are.”

Patterson pulled out her phone and dialled swiftly. “Rich, stop right where you are. Don’t move another step.”

“Why? I just followed the nasty barbecue smell to two crispy bad guys out here.” Rich’s voice was faint on the other end of the connection, but Kurt could just about hear him.

While Patterson explained the situation, Kurt hauled himself to his feet and looked around. Remi’s car was gone. His own tyres had been slashed. And there was a good chance Remi would die out there, alone and looking for a cure.

“She’s gone,” he told Patterson blankly.

Patterson put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay, Kurt. If Eve took Jane, we’ll find her.”

“No. Patterson. You…you don’t understand.” Kurt leaned against the incapacitated car, shaking his head. “Jane was the one who drugged me. The ZIP poisoning reverted her brain back to Remi. That’s why I asked you to get the CIA to move Shepherd. Did they do it?”

Patterson’s mouth dropped open, her eyes widening in shock, and Kurt had to bite back the urge to laugh. Maybe it was a side effect of the sedative, but the whole situation seemed absurdly comical.

“Y-yeah, they moved her, but are you sure…?”

“Let’s go inside and sit down. I’ll explain.” Kurt beckoned to Rich as he appeared around the side of the cabin.

A lot of confusion and disbelief later, Patterson went outside to put in a call to the NYO to deal with the bodies of Eve and her mercs, and Rich leaned forward, raising an eyebrow. “So this explains a lot, but there’s one thing I’m not clear on. If you’ve known Jane is Remi since last night, why is your shirt on inside out, and why did it smell an awful lot like sex when we walked in here?”

Kurt stared at him, speechless. How was he supposed to explain the tension and desperation that had led to his tryst with Remi? He could hardly believe he’d allowed it to happen, let alone find the words that would justify it to Rich.

But it turned out he didn’t need to. “Say no more. I recognise that look on your face, and I’ve been in enough complicated relationships to guess.”

Kurt sighed and stood up. “I’m gonna go disarm those tripwires.”

“Good call. And I will keep this little chat between us.”

_Thank god for small mercies._

* * *

**Two Days Later**

Kurt and his team had been working non-stop on trying to track Remi down since the events at the cabin, but to no avail. The medical data on Roman’s cache had led them to Dr. Roga, the creator of ZIP, and they’d located her just in time to find the woman knocked out in the shed behind the house where she’d been hiding out. At the back of the shed, an empty refrigeration unit buzzed.

The woman had been inconsolable that someone had stolen the only batch of her cure for ZIP poisoning – until Kurt had told her Roman was dead. As it turned out, she’d made the cure for Jane’s brother, who’d been bankrolling her research and keeping her hidden from the pharmaceutical company who wanted her silenced. He’d never had the chance to come and collect what she’d owed him.

“The woman who stole the cure. Is this her?” Kurt showed Dr. Roga one of the many pictures of Jane in his phone’s photo folder.

“Yes! She held me at gunpoint until I dispensed the cure for her, and then she hit me.”

“She’s my wife,” Kurt explained, swallowing the urge to apologise on Jane’s behalf. “Roman’s brother. She’s…not herself right now.”

“ZIP poisoning?” The doctor looked sympathetic.

“Yeah.” Kurt explained briefly about Jane and Remi, keeping it as simple as he could. “When she’s taken the cure…is there any chance that she’ll get her memories of being my wife back?”

“I don’t know. I’m sorry. All I can tell you is that she has a very high chance of surviving the poisoning. As for the effects on her mental state and memories…that would be something you’ll have to wait and see.”

Kurt nodded, his mind receding back into the numbness that had taken him over since he’d realised Remi was in the wind. “Thank you. At least she’ll be alive out there somewhere.” _If she manages to get someone to administer the cure before she dies. And if the cure actually works._

Before he could ask anything else, Rich called from the van, warning them that they had company. Kurt and Patterson were faced with the immediate task of defending Dr. Roga from a team of mercenaries, who were presumably there on behalf of the pharmaceutical company that had tried to kill Dr. Roga two years ago. Dwelling on Remi’s situation would have to wait.

* * *

When he returned home that night, weary and unable to bring himself to hope for Jane’s return, Kurt stared into the refrigerator. Nothing seemed appetising, and the vegan ingredients Jane had loved made his heart ache. They would probably begin to decay before he saw her again— _if_ he saw her again—but he couldn’t bring himself to throw them out yet.

Just as he closed the fridge door again, the landline phone rang.

_Remi._

He seized the phone and put it to his ear. “Hello?”

_Please. Please, be her. Give me something, anything—_

After an interminable moment, his wife’s voice replied, “It’s me.”

Kurt closed his eyes and leaned against the counter, torn between profound relief and undeniable rage. His voice emerged tight and cold. “Remi. Where are you?”

“I just wanted to let you know I found the cure. No more ZIP poisoning.”

“Patterson found the bug you left in her lab this afternoon. Don’t pretend you did the detective work on your own.” He wanted to hug her and kill her all at once. The fact that she was going to live made him want to celebrate. But she was still Remi—that much was clear.

“That’s fine. I don’t need it anymore. This is the last you and your team will ever hear from me. I just figured I owed you some closure.”

Kurt gritted his teeth. “What will you do now? Try to find Shepherd again?”

“Whatever comes next for me, you won’t be in on it. Have a nice life, Kurt.”

“I’m not giving up,” he vowed. “Jane’s memories are still in your brain somewhere. I’ll find you, and I will get her back.”

 _Click._ She’d hung up on him.

Kurt slammed the phone down and stared at it, unable to relax or move as his brain worked overtime. He didn’t know how, where or when he’d find her again, but his gut instinct told him one thing: he hadn’t seen the last of Remi Briggs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I left it open-ended for a sequel at some point! I've banned myself from starting any new multi-chapter fics until I've knocked a few off my works-in-progress list, though, so it won't be immediately.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, everyone. If you enjoyed it, it would mean the world to me if you left a comment. Feedback is fangirl fuel!


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